Full Time Student

Tuesday 5-14-13

Today was a good day at Dani Kindergarten. We got to the school and headed up to teach our lessons. I brought colored paper to put on the floor to mark where the kids should sit and did my best to introduce

Musical Chairs. I don't think I got nearly any language in and can't wait for next week when I can go back to teaching drama. This school has great kids and fun teachers but lets face it, the highlight is definitely the food. Every morning Zoe, the teacher who can speak English, asks us what we want to eat for lunch and every day we get what we asked for! Today we got pork ribs and potatoes with our purple bean rice. MMMMM!! it was so good! I think it has to do with the fact that the cook cooks for two people and it’s not the general cafeteria food but either way, Rachelle and I love it.

Rachelle and I got back to the school as lunch was ending at Daguanghua, we saw Candice walking up to her room so we ran over to her and talked to her about extra calligraphy/ painting classes. She told me that I could come tonight at 6:00 which is perfect because I usually get done with kungfu around 5:45! I told her I would be there and ran up the steps to my room.

I made it upstairs and messaged Lee to confirm my 2:00 class. As I was waiting for his reply, I was cleaning my room up and trying to get ready for the transition between calligraphy and kungfu as well as tomorrows classes. During this process, I lost my water bottle... what the heck is wrong with me?! I am losing my mind over here, after 10 solid min walking up and down the hall with no real purpose because I knew that it was in my room somewhere, I realized that I had put it in the fridge... come on Dell, really? Whatever, who needs a brain anyways? I had about 5 min to lie down and then it was off to Kungfu practice!  

I wore my new uniform today and not gonna lie, I felt pretty cool :) but how could you not in such a legit uniform??

Practice went well! I learned a new technique that I call thumb spin since I have to make up the names to all of the techniques I learn so that I can sort them all out in my head. 3 hours went by, and I got my routine welts and bumps, but it’s all for a good cause... right? Haha

I headed to dinner to find out it was nasty and spent the next 10min of my “break” fishing out the pieces of corn out of the chunks of mystery meat and peas.. or I think that’s what they are. I ran out of time but more so just ran out of motivation and headed up to the Calligraphy room. It’s a good thing I grabbed a power bar on my way out because I was definitely still hungry.

I snacked on my power bar in the hallway outside Candice’s room until she and Penny showed up. Penny and Candice are both Chinese teachers here but attached at the hip. I always see them with each other. Rachelle has been taking Chinese classes from them so she came up and tried Calligraphy for a little bit but wasn't digging it so she just practiced her Chinese while I worked on my flowers and learning how to paint. Candice's sister came a little later and told me she has an English name now which is, Naome. Naome saw how I was struggling with the pedals of my flowers and told me that the flower that I was trying to do wasn't matching the stroke style that I have. I didn't even know I had a stroke style so you can imagine how well I did that smile and nod.

She opened her book and pointed to a flower and painted the flower step by step. I watched in awe at how easy she made it look. After she finished what looked like a master piece to me, she gave me the paper and let me free. I tried... and I really tried. If you saw my first attempt you never would have guessed it was supposed to be a flower. I took a deep breath and got a new paper, I got some ink and started painting away. The second flower amazingly came together stroke by stroke which gave me motivation for the third flower which turned out even better! This whole time Naome is pulling out this great work with flowers and leaves and the whole thing, but I was proud of myself. By the time I got those flowers painted, it was late and I was trying to keep my eyelids open. We cleaned up and headed back to our rooms.

When I got to my room Sam was all ready for bed so I had to tip toe but I got ready and made growling tummy some oatmeal. After 3 hours of Kungfu and 2 more of Calligraphy my brain is tired and my body is drained. I had an awesome day today but I’m ready to get to bed!